Disability and civil rights - Worthwhile Language - March newsletter

Disability and Civil Rights

A few weeks ago, on March 4th, one of the most impactful American activists of the 20th century died.

But if you aren’t disabled, or you don’t have friends or family members who are disabled in ways that require accommodations, then you might not know about her and her legacy.

This activist’s name was Judy Heumann. She was known to many as the Mother of the Disability Rights movement. And it is thanks to Heumann and her decades of work that here in the US we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is designed to make the world more viable for disabled people.

One of Heumann’s first pushes for civil rights was a 1970 lawsuit she filed against the NYC board of education. They had denied her a teaching license because a childhood case of polio meant she was a wheelchair user. Their claim was that her paralyzed legs would prevent her from escorting students out of the school in the case of an emergency.

Her counter-claim, which the courts sided with, was that accommodations made her as capable in an emergency as teachers who used their legs for mobility. A ramp, a motorized wheelchair, a classroom on the ground floor – all of those would let Heumann function just fine in an emergency. And so she became New York City’s first teacher in a wheelchair.

Because I’m always looking at things through the lens of language, I’m especially interested in how Heumann critiqued the ways we talk about disability. And how we talk about disabled people and their relationship to the world.

Heumann pointed out that there was an issue with the medical model of disability, where the focus was always on the individual person and their impairments, disabilities, or differences. How “deficient” they were. How they were a burden.

But, Heumann noted, the focus should actually be on a social model of disability, shifting the focus away from the individual and onto the ways that society was currently creating unnecessary obstacles and barriers for disabled people. Keeping them out of places they belonged. Making it incredibly difficult to live lives comparable to their abled friends and family.

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I talk about this in my book in Chapter 4, Draw People In. Here’s a brief excerpt:

…comments tend to focus on individuals and what is seen as individual limitations, rather than on places and systems that refuse to shift and become more inclusive. To quote a tweet from activist Elena Hung, if you say, “She can’t get inside the building because of her wheelchair,” the focus is on the wrong thing.

Instead, Hung suggests that we shift our attention: “She can’t get inside because the building is not accessible. The building has a barrier that does not let her in. The wheelchair is not the problem; the building’s lack of access is the problem.”

In a comment on this tweet, Dr. Tatiana Prowell pointed out we should go one step further: “The building didn’t cause this. People did. Planners who did not think about access for people who use wheelchairs & did not bother to consult any. Able-bodied people who use the bldg & do not demand accessibility. We caused this problem.”

The lawyer using the wheelchair had told me about how often he was ignored and interrupted in meetings. Issues like inaccessible buildings, including architecturally significant buildings like the new Hunters Point Library in New York (which met ADA requirements but made popular departments functionally inaccessible), show that again and again disabled people are ignored to the point where they aren’t even in the meetings. Designing spaces, websites, and events that are meant to include everyone and then not speaking with disabled people about accessibility is problematic.

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Judy Heumann used sit-ins, lawsuits, protests, and the power of government agencies to address the discrimination against and unnecessary challenges faced by disabled people. Thanks to her, a tremendous amount of progress has been made. But there’s still a long, long way to go.

May her memory be a blessing.

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Book news

The Inclusive Language Field Guide is now available for pre-orders!

The book will be physically available in three formats (paperback, e-book, and audio book) on October 3rd. In the meantime, you can pre-order it via Penguin Random House, the distributor.

Here’s the first endorsement that will appear on the back cover:

“The ultimate roadmap to welcoming, including, and honoring everyone we encounter with the power of inclusive language. So, stop walking on eggshells around colleagues, ramp up your ILQ (inclusive language intelligence), and start drawing people in instead of making them feel erased.”

W. Brad Johnson PhD, Professor, United States Naval Academy, coauthor of Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace.

learn more about our inclusive language services>>

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Attacks on “uppity women”

In the March focus on women’s history, we often overlook more recent historical events.

Remember the time in July 2020 that Ted Yolo, a US Representative, told Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she was “disgusting” and “out of [her] freaking mind,” and then called her an “[obscene adjective] [obscene noun]”?

Read more about this incident, and why it’s so common to criticize women with ad hominem attacks on their looks or personality rather than engaging meaningfully with the content of their words.

read more about "uppity" women >>

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Advice column begins April 1

A few months ago, I asked if you were interested in an inclusive language advice column featuring questions answered by me. And a bunch of you said – yes!

So in addition to this monthly newsletter, which comes out on the 15th of each month, I will be launching Let’s Talk Inclusive Language, which will come out on the 1st of each month.

If you have a question on inclusive language, send it on in to admin@worthwhileconsulting.com. No question too small, and even if you think it’s too stupid to ask, it probably isn’t – and I'm betting at least one other person out there has the same question.

read, watch, or listen to inclusive language insights